You may fancy that warrior, so stern and so stony, Whom thirty years since we all used to call BONEY, When, engaged in what he styled "fulfilling his destinies," He led his rapscallions across the Borysthenes, And had made up his mind Snug quarters to find In Moscow, against the catarrhs and the coughs Which are apt to prevail 'mongst the "Owskis" and "Offs," At a time of the year When your nose and your ear Are by no means so safe there as people's are here, Inasmuch as "Jack Frost," that most fearful of Bogles, Makes folks leave their cartilage oft in their "fogles." You may fancy, I say, That same BONEY'S dismay, When Count Rostopchin At once made him drop chin, And turn up his eyes, as his rapee he took, With a sort of a _mort-de-ma-vie_ kind of look, On perceiving that "Swing," And "all that sort of thing," Was at work,--that he'd just lost the game without knowing it-- That the Kremlin was blazing--the Russians "a going it,"-- Every plug in the place frozen hard as the ground, And never a Turn-cock at all to be found! You may fancy King Charles at some Court Fancy-Ball, (The date we may fix In Sixteen sixty-six,) In the room built by Inigo Jones at Whitehall, Whence his father, the Martyr,--(as such mourn'd by all Who, in _his_, wept the Law's and the Monarchy's fall,)-- Stept out to exchange regal robes for a pall-- You may fancy King Charles, I say, stopping the brawl,[38] As bursts on his sight the old church of St. Paul, By the light of its flames, now beginning to crawl From basement to buttress, and topping its wall-- --You may fancy old Clarendon making a call, And stating in cold, slow, monotonous drawl, "Sire, from Pudding Lane's End, close by Fishmongers' Hall, To Pye Corner, in Smithfield, there is not a stall There, in market, or street,--not a house, great or small, In which Knight wields his faulchion, or Cobbler his awl, But's on fire!!"--You may fancy the general squall, And bawl as they all call for wimple and shawl!-- --You may fancy all this--but I boldly assert You _can't_ fancy Aunt Fan--as she looked on MY SHIRT!!!